Carla Miller [00:00:02]:
If you'd like to build a happy team, then today's episode is one for you. I'm interviewing expert Richard Clark on what makes a happy team at work and how can leaders of teams create the right environment for happiness? Richard is the founder and ex CEO of Secret Sauce, an IT company based in Spain. And in 2014, he had a theory that if he set up a company whose main KPIs were team and client happiness, then the team would collaborate better, be more aligned with their clients, and perform better. And all the traditional measures of success, profit, revenue, growth would naturally follow. For 10 years, Richard studied the science of happiness in the workplace and applied it in his company. And in 2022, with almost 50 employees, Richard handed over the role of CEO, and he now dedicates his life to sharing his knowledge. So he writes, speaks, and teaches leaders and organizations how to use the science of happiness and well-being to build better teams. I really enjoyed my conversation with Richard, and I think you'll leave feeling inspired and with some practical ideas about the conversations you need to have within your team in order to create the right environment for them to thrive.

Carla Miller [00:01:24]:
This is the influence and impact podcast for women leaders, helping you confidently navigate the ups and downs of leadership and feel less alone on your journey as a leader. My name's Carla Miller. I've been coaching leaders for the past 15 years, and I am your new leadership bestie. I'm here to remind you of the value that you bring to your organization, to help you believe in yourself, and to share practical tools and insights from myself and my brilliant guests that will help you to succeed in your career. Now before we jump into the episode, just a reminder that there is an amazing special offer going on at the moment for people that join my women leading community. So this community is all about helping you lead without overwhelm. And inside it is loads of support from peer support to q and a's with me and menopause support. And there's lots in there that can help you up skill as well from online training modules to some fantastic live workshops on topics like how to say no, how to stop your team feeling overwhelmed, how to avoid drama in your team, all the stuff you need to know to make leading less stressful.

Carla Miller [00:02:41]:
You can take what you need and ignore what you don't, so it's going to reduce overwhelm in your life, not add to it. Now there's a special price at the moment, and it's only in place until the 1st May. So if that sounds like something that you might benefit from, head on over to carlamillertraining.comforward/womenleading, all one word, and you will find all the details there. So head over there before the 1st May because that is when the early bird pricing runs out. Okay. So let's roll the episode with Richard Clark. So, Richard, fantastic to have you on the podcast talking about happiness and team happiness in particular. It's a really interesting career.

Carla Miller [00:03:29]:
What made you decide to focus your career around happiness?

Richard Clarke [00:03:34]:
Okay. So I have almost always been fascinated by this concept of happiness. So I think it started when I was around 15, 16 years old. I had no idea what career I wanted to do, what a levels I wanted to do. And so I went to I met a career adviser who said, just do something that makes you happy, that you'll enjoy doing. And ever since then, I've been fixated on on my personal happiness, how to the things I have to do to make myself happy, and then later on, with my company. So I've traveled the world. I've worked many, many jobs.

Richard Clarke [00:04:11]:
I've tried different things, all to do with a conversation I had with a career adviser a few years ago.

Carla Miller [00:04:18]:
And you set up your company with happiness at the absolute heart of it, didn't you? Tell us more about that.

Richard Clarke [00:04:24]:
So I had this theory about 10 years ago. I'd I'd started I've been running IT teams in India, and I've been had my own I tried a couple of little companies, and had this theory that if I could if I could create a company where all the team was happy, right, if that was their our definition of success, and our and our and our clients were happy, then everything else would just fall into place. Because I thought that if our team was happy, they'd collaborate better, they'd work better together, they'd work better with our clients. And I thought if that was our definition of success, everything else, like profit, growth, would naturally follow.

Carla Miller [00:05:04]:
And did it?

Richard Clarke [00:05:05]:
Not to begin with, no. Because it was very simple. I had no idea how to make people happy. So I thought so nowadays they say the 3 P's. Right? I thought that the secret was, like, pay, perks, and pizzas. Right? So we got hammocks in our workplace. We got sofas. We had free beers.

Richard Clarke [00:05:24]:
We had free breakfast every Thursday. And I thought that was the secret to making a happy workplace. And, no, it's not. It's a lot deeper than that. And then the other thing, I I started off with make our clients happy. That was our that was our KPI to begin with. That doesn't work if your team's not happy. So yeah.

Richard Clarke [00:05:45]:
It's been a long, long, learning curve. But yeah. No. The beginning definitely did not work. It does now though.

Carla Miller [00:05:54]:
And what do you think makes people happy at work then? If it's not those 3 P's, what is it?

Richard Clarke [00:06:00]:
Well, it's interesting. So if you ask like all the experts, they've they've got various various different answers. The one one that I quite like the one that I like the most is the is the US surgeon general, because they're basically put into 5 categories, and 5 is easier to remember than 7 or 9 or 13 or whatever. And, yeah, so there are 5 areas, and that first one is safety. Right? If someone feels safe at work, that means that they're gonna get paid on time, that their that their company's company's stable, and that they feel psychologically safe, and then then they feel part of the community, and they they feel they have opportunities for growth. They're gonna get promotions. They're gonna get paid more. They're gonna get, pay rises.

Richard Clarke [00:06:48]:
Then you've got, purpose. They've got to feel that their their work has value and that they're being recognized for it. And then finally, that they've got some control over their work. Now those are the 5 areas that more or less cover happiness. You've gotta everyone's different, and it changes throughout your life as well. But those are the sort of 5 broad areas that you need to cover to make someone happy at work. Now salary obviously does come into that because if you're paid nothing and you don't feel you're recognized for your work, you're gonna feel unhappy, but it's not nearly as important as as the rest of the things.

Carla Miller [00:07:27]:
Okay. And then there was 5 of them. Do they do you need to have all 5 in place? What if you're great at 4 and not at the 5th one? Does that still work, or is it that you really need that all of those boxes ticked?

Richard Clarke [00:07:38]:
So that's really that's a really good question, actually. And what I've found with, lots of the companies that I've been working with is that yes, you do need a little bit of all of them, but the amount of all of them depends on you or and depends on your company. So, for example, I work with, I work with a charity, and they're really impressive. They send people to the frontline of war zones and stuff like that. So they have a huge sense of purpose. They have great value in their work, and that's not enough for their work workers. You can't they can't just get away with that. They also need a feel a little bit of autonomy as well and, need to feel part of a community.

Richard Clarke [00:08:24]:
So, yes, you do need all of them, but the amount depends on you, depends on your company, depends on your values, and also on where you are in your life too.

Carla Miller [00:08:34]:
Okay. And I know you work a lot with entire organizations on helping make teams happier. But what where I wanted to focus this discussion is on what team leaders can do because most of the people listening here aren't quite at the top of their organization yet. But I hope they shall be clocking this for when they are at the top of their organizations. So how can leaders of teams create the right environment for happiness for their team?

Richard Clarke [00:09:02]:
Okay. So just to be clear, most of the work I do is with actually teams, with small teams. So I work with teams of 6, 8 people, and I work together in the teams. So it is quite difficult to create change in a whole organization, but if you have if you have teams, it's a bit easier. And so if you're a leader for a team, right, and you've decided, I wanna make my team a bit happier. There's, for me, there's there's 3 steps you you need to follow. K? And the first one is learn about it. Learn what makes people happy.

Richard Clarke [00:09:35]:
Just the basics to begin with. Five areas. Have a look at the US surgeon general's well-being report. Have a look at the the guidelines from from Indeed. They've got some really good resources there. Learn about it so that you understand the basics. Right? Secondly, then reflect on your own team. K? There are lots of ways to do this.

Richard Clarke [00:09:55]:
You can send out surveys. You can talk to people. Again, Indeed have a very good survey that you can use. And so after that, you'll say, 'Right, okay, I understand there are 5 areas', or 7, depending on who you're using. But say you're using my system, it's 5 areas, and you do you reflect, you talk to your team, and you think, wow. We've got a really great community where they've got a real sense of purpose, but nobody has any idea about their their career. So we need to work on that. And then you just try then you can just do little experiments.

Richard Clarke [00:10:31]:
You can little initiatives to work on that particular area. So I'm just gonna tell you a little story. So right probably about a year after I started my company, we had an amazing team. They they were they were brilliant. They we used to they used to go out every Thursday. They used to meet up at weekends, go to the cinema together. They were really good friends. So about 15 in the team, really, really good friends.

Richard Clarke [00:10:56]:
And we thought we'd nailed it. And then we sent out a survey to everyone, and we and one of the questions was, do you see yourself here in a year's time? And over 50% of our company said no. So so, yeah, it was a little problem. And once we dug down into it, they said, yeah, we love working here. It's a lot of fun, but I've got no idea what my career is. I've got no I see no way of getting promoted, no way of earning more money, and no way of learning more. And so we thought, right. We're missing that.

Richard Clarke [00:11:31]:
And so we worked on that. That really helped, and then then we moved on to the next thing.

Carla Miller [00:11:36]:
Yeah. That makes sense. And as you were going through the 5, one of the things that occurred to me, like, you started with safety. And I was thinking about how a lot of the people I'm talking to at the moment, their organisations are going through restructures, not even the first restructure they've been through. There's a lot of this in the charity sector in particular at the moment. I'm wondering how how you can try and create a sense of safety within a team when there is so much flux and change, and there isn't that that idea of I've got this job forever. I'm safe here. How do you so I guess this is more about managing team unhappiness than than, making them super happy.

Carla Miller [00:12:22]:
But any advice on how someone can create that sense of safety

Richard Clarke [00:12:32]:
Yeah. That is really difficult, and we see it. We measure happiness in our company. So we see the happiness levels, the average happiness levels of all our team every week. And if we lose a client, right, and we announce to the team in the team meeting that this client has gone through financial difficulties, and I know they won't be working with us in a month's time, The whole team dips in happiness by 0.1, 0.2. And however much we tell them, look. It's fine. When your job is perfectly safe, and it still affects the whole company.

Richard Clarke [00:13:11]:
And, honestly, I don't know the answer to this. We reassure them. We tell them their job is safe, but it's difficult. I I don't know the answer to that one, I'm afraid.

Carla Miller [00:13:21]:
It's a tricky one. I know. If it was easy, we'd all have worked it out, wouldn't we? And I I think maybe it's a sometimes, I guess, you, as a leader, you can't necessarily make your team happy, but it probably means something to them that you're trying and be and that you are working on what you can control, do you think?

Richard Clarke [00:13:42]:
I think this is a common misconception. It's not our job, I don't think, as leaders, as managers, as team leaders to to make our team happy. Right? We can't be responsible for what's happening at home. I saw a study the other day about a company that's incentivizing their team to sleep better. Thought, hang on. That's not, yeah, that's not your responsibility. Anyway, but I do think it's our responsibility to create an environment where they can be happy. Right? So, yeah, make it a safe environment.

Richard Clarke [00:14:14]:
Give them opportunities to grow. Let them understand your purpose. Yeah. Create that environment, and then and then they can be happy. There's a book called the Happiness Index' by, Matt Phelan. And he's got a great analogy. He says he compares it to a gardener. Right? A gardener can plant as many seeds as he want, but he can't make all the seeds grow.

Richard Clarke [00:14:36]:
But what he can do is optimize the conditions that as many can grow as possible. And I think that's our responsibilities as team leaders.

Carla Miller [00:14:44]:
Yeah. I'm in total agreement on that. And I think I I coach a lot of managers, including some new managers, and I think that they very much do feel responsibility for their team's happiness. And I often work on kind of deprogramming them from that. Like, we want them to be great managers and leaders, and to care about their team. But if their team are having a stressful time outside of work or if someone's in the wrong job for them, like, there's not there are some things you just can't change. And if you take on responsibility for everyone else's emotions, you're also kind of infantilizing them a little bit as well. Like, they are fully grown adults.

Carla Miller [00:15:22]:
They get to choose whether they stay, whether they go, whether they come to work in a good mood or a bad mood. And I saw this a lot during lockdown. I had one client, and she was lovely. And her whole team had been furloughed, and they were calling her every day. All of them were calling her for a half hour chat every day. So she was doing all of their jobs and emotionally supporting every single one of them who was stuck at home having a hard time. And I was like, okay. We need to draw some some boundaries here because you've also got to look after your own needs and your own happiness as well.

Carla Miller [00:15:53]:
And I think women in particular were programmed to put others' needs first. And sometimes it's really good to see that clear boundary between someone else who's responsible for their happiness. And exactly as you put it, what you can do is create the right environment where people have the best chance to thrive, and that's still not gonna be the right environment for everyone, is it? There will be still someone where it's not the right role or they're ready to move on or they're just not in a great place at the moment.

Richard Clarke [00:16:20]:
I always found that's one of most difficult things. I was asked the other day, in an interview, what's the the best and worst parts of running a team, running a company? And for me, the worst part is when somebody comes and says, I want to move on. I want to go to I've got another job. That was just like, ah, that's the worst thing for me. And it took me many years to realize that, actually, if I if my if their happiness is is the most important thing to me, I should be happy for them that they've got this this new job, this new opportunity. So, yeah, I I see what you mean.

Carla Miller [00:16:57]:
And it's it's tricky as well as that, a couple of years ago, I had another guest on called Graham Alcott, and we were talking about kindness in leadership. Another male guest, and you are a rare male guest. We've let you on the podcast, Richard. You're very, very special.

Richard Clarke [00:17:12]:
Thank you.

Carla Miller [00:17:13]:
And and he was talking about the difference between being nice and being kind. And and it's just made me think about how as a leader do you hold that let's say you're you're developing a team. You want to, support that team's happiness, but, meanwhile, there's also performance issues to deal with. I guess, how do you creating team's happiness, does that mean you've got to be the happy, clappy, upbeat person all the time, or can you do that alongside having tough conversations? What does that look like, do you think?

Richard Clarke [00:17:43]:
That's a really tricky question. I try to appear upbeat, when I when I when I come to the office, and it's amazing what people see. If I come in grumpy, they go, what's happened? And so I try to appear upbeat. But I think it all goes back to psychological safety. I think if they're worried, they can talk to you, And and that they feel does your your team feel that they you they listen to you if that that you listen to them, and properly listen to them, not just paying them lip service. And so kindness to me is just respecting them for who they are and and listening to them and really, really listening to them.

Carla Miller [00:18:25]:
That's so important, isn't it? The people that say how are you and then quickly get on to the next thing on the agenda, and you're like, you don't actually care who I am, do you? So, yeah, I could see that that that intention is really important.

Richard Clarke [00:18:37]:
We made a tiny, tiny change to our company about 5 or 6 years ago. We used to have this policy where people could give their suggestions, anything that they thought they could improve in the company. And they would do it. We'd write them down. We did discuss them in the management meeting. And a lot of them, we we didn't do. And we got feedback, from a few moments of staff saying, you never listen to us. You never listen to us.

Richard Clarke [00:19:03]:
And we go, well, we do. We just don't implement everything that they suggest. And so we we changed our policy a bit. And we we what we did was any idea that we had, we wrote down on a list, we then present it. And then the next action was to feedback to that person and say, we listened to you, we presented it, we've decided not to go ahead with it, because x, y, and z. That was enough. People felt they were listened to. That made a big difference, really big difference to people being felt they were listened to.

Carla Miller [00:19:33]:
I hear you on that. It's that thing about consultation, isn't it, in in terms of you if you're gonna consult people, then you need to actually take on board what they're saying. Doesn't mean you're gonna go ahead with all of it, but and you absolutely need to close that loop and feedback. Yeah. Such an important point. And often we forget.

Richard Clarke [00:19:49]:
Because if you don't, they won't suggest it. They won't feel safe, making suggestions again.

Carla Miller [00:19:54]:
And so, obviously, you as you were saying, you work quite a lot with teams. Often, the culture of an organization is determined by the people at the top of an organization. If you could say something to chief execs, what would you wish they knew about creating happiness in their organization?

Richard Clarke [00:20:12]:
Go and learn about psychological safety. Right? Go and watch go and watch some go and watch Amy Edmondson's TEDx talk on it. Go and listen to her podcasts on it. Read some blogs on it. Once I learned about psychological safety, it was like a light bulb moment. Oh my god, that's why this team works, that why that team worked, that's why this project is successful and this one wasn't. It is absolutely critical. And once you understand it, it makes everything else make sense.

Carla Miller [00:20:45]:
So if someone's listening to this and they haven't heard of psychological safety, I'm not gonna ask you for, like, a textbook definition, but what what is it to you? What do you when you think about psychological safety, talk to us about that.

Richard Clarke [00:20:57]:
Okay. So if you're in a group, right, psychological safety means that you feel safe this is a bit of a textbook, I assume, but then I'll give an example after it. If you feel safe, like asking people questions, challenging others, and and making suggestions, all without them saying anything negative criticizing you back. Right? You feel safe, saying those things. The way I like to talk about it is when when I was at school, I was in a classroom of, whatever, 30 30 kids, and double physics, Friday afternoon, I did not feel safe putting my hand up and saying, I didn't understand what you just said, because I was terrified that the teacher would go, weren't you listening? Or the other kids would make some silly sound that I was being being dumb. I did not feel safe, And that's psychological safety. And the thing that people, that often people misunderstand about psychological safety, it's not your responsibility to feel safe. K? It's the responsibility of everybody around you to make you feel safe in the team, and that's what's important.

Richard Clarke [00:22:07]:
So when we have a new say you got a we got an intern joining a team of 6 6 developers. Right? We're an IT company. We have an intern, they're not gonna feel safe in that team. They're gonna feel really shy. They won't wanna stick their head out and ask any questions. So it's the responsibility of everyone else to make them feel safe. They do make a suggestion. They say, what a good idea.

Richard Clarke [00:22:29]:
Right? And that that will help them feel safe.

Carla Miller [00:22:33]:
And so it's not even just the leader. A leader probably can't create psychological safety on their own, can they? So as a leader, your words have more impact, don't they? But if there's other people in the room who are sending little arrows out to anyone who's saying anything so so how as a leader do you encourage your team to to embrace psychological safety for each other? Is that is that an explicit conversation to have with them, do you think?

Richard Clarke [00:22:58]:
Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. So we we actually teach it. So we teach this is psychological safety. This is what it looks like.

Richard Clarke [00:23:06]:
Right? So a good good measure of it is if you have a group of 5 people, does everyone speak about the same amount in a in a meeting? Right? If they do, they tend to be psychologically safe. If one person's quiet, good sign that they're not. So teach it. Teach the advantages of it, and teach them how they can make other people feel safe, because it's not obvious all the time. So just to give you an example, we had must have been about 5 years ago, we had a a new developer join one of our teams. Right? She was super shy, like, really, really shy. And she didn't want to contribute by speaking in meetings. Right? She she just didn't feel safe speaking up.

Richard Clarke [00:23:49]:
So what we did was we would give her the agenda before the meeting. Say, right, these are the questions that we're gonna be talking about. Give her time to think about them, so she wasn't put on the spot. We also used, like, a a retro board with, like, post its. So it was there were online meeting on Zoom. We'd give them, and then people could write their answers. She felt a lot safer writing the answers. And then any contentious stuff, we used to do, anonymously.

Richard Clarke [00:24:18]:
And then she felt a lot safer that she wasn't gonna make a mistake. She wasn't worried that anyone was gonna say anything bad because the rest of the team were really nice people, but she was still really worried that she was gonna make a mistake in front of people. By giving her that the questions beforehand, the time to think about it, communicate by writing, yeah, she felt safer. And over time, she built she her level of safety increased, and after a year or so, it took quite a while, she was able to contribute by speaking in in meetings. And by the end, she was, just chatting away like everybody else.

Carla Miller [00:24:52]:
Fantastic example. And and those adaptations you made in order for her to be able to to feel safe and to contribute in a way that was within her comfort zone is a really lovely example of doing that.

Richard Clarke [00:25:05]:
Another another way is to phrase your questions so they're easier to answer, so they're less ambiguous. So another thing we did was instead of saying, how do you think it went the last 2 weeks? And you go, oh my God, Is do they think it went well? Do they think it went badly? You say, name one thing that you think that went well. Right. Much less chance of feeling they're gonna say the wrong answer.

Carla Miller [00:25:29]:
Interesting. I'm thinking about how that how that layers onto coaching as a manager as well, and taking that sort of coaching approach with asking great questions. I like I mean, I find this idea of psychological safety fascinating. And I think probably, obviously, we talk a lot about women leaders and the bias that women face amongst other groups in the workplace. I'm guessing there's probably not a lot of psychological safety if you are the only person in the room who is neurodiverse or who is from a working class background or who is a person of colour or is a woman. Some of that, I I guess, in those rooms, everyone else in the room has to make an extra effort to create psychological safety for the people that are in some way different.

Richard Clarke [00:26:16]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Totally. Yeah. Completely. There was a study a few years ago on on it's on IT teams. Right? And whether you've had culturally diverse IT teams. So I was working with t teams.

Richard Clarke [00:26:29]:
There's a one team was in 2 teams in America or 1 team in America and 1 team in in India. Right? And and, yeah, the team in India just contributed a lot less because they didn't feel psychologically safe. Now, obviously, a diverse team is far better than a homogeneous team. Right? Far better. But you have to be more intentional to make the the the more diverse members of the team to feel feel safer in that environment. It has to be much more intentional. You you can you can imagine, like, 5 45 year old guys in a pub talking about football. They're gonna be field safe, but 17 year old girl from that's just joined their team to help with the, the social media, yeah, she won't feel safe in that environment.

Richard Clarke [00:27:19]:
You have to make her feel help her feel safe.

Carla Miller [00:27:21]:
And so it's really helpful that everybody understands what psychological safety is and understands the ways that they can create it as team members. It's not all on the responsibility of the leader. I love that. And I know that you have been, like, reading lots of research on happiness, and you can talk about this all day. What's the most interesting thing that you've discovered or the most interesting research that you've read when it comes to happiness?

Richard Clarke [00:27:50]:
There's so much. But there's one one that came out I think it came out at the end of last year or start of this year. And it's as as you get older, what's more important to you and what makes you happier at work? So I always get these myself. Gen x. Gen x, that's that's me. We're to us, that's, what's more important to us is autonomy. Feel that we have control of our work and flexible work, and that we can adapt our our work around our lives. We've got kids, and we want to be able to see see their school plays, stuff like that, and we want to have control of our life.

Richard Clarke [00:28:30]:
But for the Gen z, autonomy isn't so important, but purpose and opportunity to growth are really, especially values and purpose. They need to feel they're doing something good for the world and that they have a strong sense of purpose as well. That to me was a bit of a lot. I I always knew that that people were different, but seeing that the age the generation difference was just really interesting too.

Carla Miller [00:28:54]:
That is interesting, and and it also prompts, and I know we chatted about this beforehand, the idea that different people different things make different people happy. Don't they? And so you need to be having those conversations, don't you? You need to be saying to someone even if it's not necessarily what makes you happy. I know I used to work a bit with dysfunctional teams, as a facilitator. And one of the things I do is get everyone to go around and share what makes you feel valued and what makes you feel less valued. And people were really surprised by the answers, but lots of it was just so super practical. I remember one person who everyone considered to be quite difficult, and she was like, if you make me a cup of tea, I feel like you value me as a person. She got a lot of cups cups of tea after that, and everything went a lot more smoothly. But you for one person, it might be actually what makes you feel valued is you praise me in front of everyone else.

Carla Miller [00:29:42]:
For someone else, that's their absolute worst nightmare. And I think as a leader, we sometimes or as human beings, we sometimes assume everyone thinks, values, prioritizes the same things as we do, and it's it's really useful to have those conversations. Do you find that you encouraging people to have conversations individually on this topic?

Richard Clarke [00:30:03]:
Yeah. All the time. So just to go back to this the the interview the the questionnaire we sent out to our staff, where 50% said they wouldn't stay with us, because they didn't have a career path with us. 50%, or just under 50%, said they were really happy with the current situation. So, but, yeah, we we measure happiness every week, and this is it's on a red, amber, green scale. So we we that's important, seeing the levels, but what's we get what we do after that, we have one to ones. We have half an hour one to ones with every single member of staff every week. Right? And after we've had their happiness level, if they say, I'm feeling orange this week or I'm feeling amber, then we have that conversation.

Richard Clarke [00:30:47]:
Why are you feeling amber this week? What can we do? And so, yes, it's really important, and different for everybody all the time. And so when I when I talk to teams about happiness at work, right, if you do this one thing, right, it's gonna move the needle for some people, but others, it won't have any effect at all. Right? And I've seen initiatives that we've done in some companies that, with other companies, have made absolutely zero difference. Yeah.

Carla Miller [00:31:20]:
So every every individual is different. Every team is different. Every organization is different. Now you have a very popular substack newsletter, don't you? Tell us tell us a little bit about your substack because I'm sure people want to sign up for that.

Richard Clarke [00:31:34]:
Yes. So what I want to when once I started talking about, happiness at work, once I started talking to colleagues and friends about it, they say, thought, that's great. It's amazing what you do, but it's really difficult. That's really difficult. I would never be able to do that in our company. I'd never get the buy in. And so what my sub sec is, it teaches you, it gives you little behavioral nudges, tiny little things that you can do every week just to make a little bit of difference. Don't know if you've come across the theory of marginal gains, the 1% difference.

Richard Clarke [00:32:06]:
If you make lots of 1% changes in a company or in a sports team or in a relationship or whatever, you can have significant changes. So what I'm my substack is little 5 minute hacks that you can do every, every week that will move the needle a little bit. So my most popular post is is one that I wrote about changing the coffee machine at work. Okay, so years ago, we moved into a new office, and we got a Nespresso machine and got all the different capsules. And we thought, wow, we've done a really good job as a posh Nespresso machine. And what happened was people used to go up and grab their coffees and go back to their desks because it does it really quickly. And then one of our team said, I'd like I've got some fresh coffee that I buy from wherever, and I'd like to make fresh coffee. Can can you buy us one of those moka pots? You know, the the Italian hexagonal, octagonal things that you pop on the stove.

Richard Clarke [00:33:07]:
We got a big one of those. It makes 12 cups of coffee. It cost us €30. So what happened was that guy, he went and made his coffee, and had 12 cups of coffee. So he used to send a message on our Slack channel, said coffee's ready. And 10, 12 people used to come up to the kitchen. They'd make their coffee, eat their milk, and they'd hang around for 10, 15 minutes drinking their coffee. They started building friendships, and people started talking between teams that hadn't talked before.

Richard Clarke [00:33:39]:
And just tiny things like that, that was a €30 investment. Right? And it builds relationships that wouldn't otherwise have, in other words, have been built. Now I've since found out that it's actually in is it Finland? Finland, they have a thing called fika, which is coffee breaks. It's part of work culture there. And it's actually in some work contracts that they actually specify that they have to have fika, and it's really important. Tiny little things like that that can make a big difference.

Carla Miller [00:34:08]:
I love that. So, if people head over to Substack, what is your what's it called, your newsletter?

Richard Clarke [00:34:15]:
Happyteams.substack.com. There we go.

Carla Miller [00:34:18]:
Excellent. We will link in the show notes, but it's easier if people just hear it as well. And if people want to find out more about you, is that the best place for them to go? Do you want them to go and sign up? Because your Substack is free, isn't it? So they can get that insight from you free, which is excellent. Where else can they find out about you?

Richard Clarke [00:34:37]:
So if you I've got a website, richardclark.eu. I'm on LinkedIn as well. And search for Richard Clark, and then put there's lots of Richard Clark, so, put in Gran Canaria. I live in Gran Canaria, and then you'll find me. I love talking about this. I love helping companies. So just give me a call, send me a message, and I can have a quick chat and point you in the right direction, share you some resources that you can read. I've got, a very I've got a sort of a white paper that I've produced that's got the basics of workplace.

Richard Clarke [00:35:06]:
It's a really good starter. Just co contact me, and I can send you one of those.

Carla Miller [00:35:10]:
Brilliant. And we will link to everything in the show notes as well. Well, I think it's fantastic to have your your perspective from both the angle of someone who set up a company with happiness at the heart of it, that's now thriving and also just helping others to do this. If we were all happier at work, then we'd all be happier in life, wouldn't we? So thank you very much for sharing your wisdom. And, hopefully, people will be heading on over to your Substack to get those little weekly incremental changes that will make a big difference. Thanks, Richard.

Richard Clarke [00:35:43]:
Thank you.

Carla Miller [00:35:46]:
Did you know that you can bring me in house to work with your team or with your organization as a whole? My team and I work in house with all sorts of organizations. At the moment, I'm planning to deliver a couple of 2 day workshops for university in London on our b boulder confidence work and stakeholder management. I have got keynotes lined up for a number of women's networks talking about influencing, imposter feelings, closing the influence gap, and I'm talking to organizations about running their women's leadership programs as well. I love to do that kind of work. So if you are looking for someone to support on that or you want to recommend me to your HR or l and d team, please do go ahead and do that. I would hugely appreciate it. If you're an individual that wants to work with me, there's 3 ways to do that. You can join Women Leading, my new community for women leaders.

Carla Miller [00:36:43]:
You can join influence and impact, my 3 month women's leadership development program that starts in May and next one's September. Or you can join be bolder, my 4 session confidence and assertiveness course, and the next cohort is coming in the autumn. I'd love to work more closely with you and get to know you and help you develop your career, your leadership skills, and your confidence.